Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel started its military operation in Gaza, officials said. As world leaders called for a full truce, Israel extended the humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza for 24 hours.

The ceasefire has been prolonged until Sunday at midnight, the
country's cabinet decided late Saturday .

"At the request of the United nations, the cabinet has
approved a humanitarian hiatus until tomorrow (Sunday) at
24:00," an unnamed official said in a statement.

However, Israel warned that it will retaliate if Hamas fires
rockets from Gaza territory. In addition, the IDF "will
continue to neutralize the terror tunnels inside Gaza. Four
terror tunnels were neutralized in Gaza on Saturday, despite the
ceasefire that was in place from 8:00 a.m.," the Jerusalem
Post reported.

Hamas rejected Israel's 24-hour extension of the humanitarian
ceasefire, a spokesman for the group said.

"No humanitarian ceasefire is valid without Israeli tanks
withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and without residents being able
to return to their homes and ambulances carrying bodies being
able to freely move around in Gaza," he said as cited by
AFP.

The Israeli Security Council is set to reconvene on Sunday
morning to reevaluate the situation.

On Saturday, Hamas ignored an Israeli announcement that it would
extend the 12-hour truce by four hours and resumed firing rockets
into from Gaza.

Despite the 12-hour cease-fire, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has
urged the Palestinians, who earlier left their homes in Gaza, to
“refrain from returning.”

“The IDF shall respond if terrorists choose to exploit this
time to attack IDF personnel or fire at Israeli civilians,”
the military’s spokesperson also said in a statement, adding that
Israel will continue “the operational activities to locate
and neutralize tunnels in the Gaza Strip” during the
ceasefire.

However, thousands of Palestinians ignored IDF warnings and
returned to their Gaza homes to find scores of houses demolished
and wreckage blocking the roads.

The residents encountered widespread destruction in the northern
town of Beit Hanoun.

“Nothing is left. Everything I have is gone,” a
Palestinian woman from the town told AP.

At least 100 bodies were recovered from the rubble in Gaza on
Saturday, with many of them being partially decomposed, Ashraf
al-Kidra, a Palestinian health official, said.

Al-Kidra spoke of 20 members of an extended family, including at
least 10 children, who were killed by tank fire that hit a
building on the edge of the town of Khan Younis.

Their funeral took place on Saturday, with hundreds of men
marching, chanting "There is only God!" while carrying
the bodies wrapped in white cloth.

Israeli military’s death toll in the ground offensive has reached
40, with the IDF announcing that three of their soldiers were
killed in Gaza in the early hours on Saturday.

Paris meeting calls for ceasefire extension

Western foreign ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Italy,
Qatar, Turkey and the US have called for an extension of the
12-hour cease-fire between Hamas and Israel during their meeting
in Paris.

"All of us want to obtain, as quickly as possible, a durable,
negotiated ceasefire that responds both to Israeli needs in terms
of security and to Palestinian needs in terms of the
social-economic development [of Gaza] and access to the territory
of Gaza," Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister,
stressed.

Before/After - Al-Shahayeeh neighbourhood in Gaza (will credit
when I find out who took the photographs) pic.twitter.com/gmimfcitu3

His British counterpart, Philip Hammond, added that “the
necessity right now is to stop the loss of life” in Gaza.

“And we stop the loss of life by getting this ceasefire to
roll over for 12 hours, 24 hours or 48 hours – and then again
until we have established the level of confidence that allows the
parties to sit round a table to talk about the substantive
issues,” Hammond explained.

Israel has replied to calls from the international community and
agreed to extend the Gaza humanitarian truce by four hours –
until midnight (21:00 GMT), a source in the country’s government
told Reuters. However, the proposal was rejected by Hamas and
minutes after the ceasefire expired, shelling of Israel resumed.

Israel launched a major air campaign in Gaza on July 8 and later
sent ground troops into Hamas-ruled territory.

The IDF say that Operation Protective Edge is aimed at halting
Palestinian rocket fire and destroying Hamas’s cross-border
tunnels. On Saturday, at least four more tunnel shafts were
discovered by the IDF. The military vowed to continue their
mission in the strip.